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Every year for the past three, Forbes has gone looking for 25 young U.S. companies with a strong shot at reaching a valuation of $1 billion or more. Last year's list included hot companies like the crowdfunding site GoFundMe, online retailer Boxed and innovative home seller OpenDoor. This year, with the help of TrueBridge Capital Partners, we asked venture firms which companies they thought most likely to hit the billion-dollar mark soon. Then we cut that list down to a final 25, evaluating strategies, funding and competitive challenges as well as estimating current revenues.

More on our methodology: TrueBridge, a 10-year-old Chapel Hill, NC firm that also collaborates with Forbes on our annual Midas list of the world’s top tech investors, asked 195 venture firms to nominate startups and to encourage their portfolio companies to nominate themselves. It also fielded entries directly, through a link that appeared on its website and on Forbes.com. To be considered, firms had to give TrueBridge their revenue numbers, their most recent valuations, a list of investors, data on their customers and an outline of their business model and growth trajectory. There was no fee to apply. TrueBridge examined nearly 100 companies, then passed a list of 40 to the Entrepreneurs team at Forbes. We did further reporting and analysis, researching companies’ track records, evaluating business plans, and talking to founders, investors, customers and competitors. We also gave TrueBridge more than a dozen additional companies to evaluate. The list is confined to U.S. startups. We’ll start fielding nominations for the 2018 list in June.

We like the variety among this year's picks, from an innovative online bridal registry (Zola) to a company that builds and launches satellites the size of wine bottles (Spire). Our feature story this year is on Optoro, a company that helps retailers and manufacturers deal with America's mountain of rejected merchandise.

This is the first time the list includes founders who have previously appeared in Forbes on our annual 30 Under 30 list. Eugene Martinelli made the 2017 finance list because we thought his mortgage software maker, Blend, held promise. Same story with Zach Perret and William Hockey, who made the 2015 finance list after starting Plaid, whose software helps tech companies work with banks. T.J. Parker made the 2013 health care list after cofounding PillPack, a mail-order pharmacy that delivers medications in packages sorted by the date and time pills should be taken. And the four co-founders of Segment, Calvin French-Owen, Peter Reinhardt, Ian Storm Taylor and Ilya Volodarsky, were on the 2015 list in enterprise technology after launching their customer data analysis startup. This year's Under 30 list took note of the cofounders of Owlet Baby Care, a company that made our next billion-dollar startup list last year.

What it does: Makes software that lets IT departments manage employees' cloud-based applications. At first, BetterCloud focused only on Google's productivity suite. But in 2015, CEO Politis decided to blow up the business and start over. Politis rebuilt it to manage any software used in business, from Slack to Zendesk. BetterCloud laid off much of its customer-facing staff and spent $35 million retooling over two years.

What it does: Makes cloud-based software that lenders use to originate mortgages online. CEO Ghamsari, 31, says the old process was "broken." Applicants, for instance, would disclose how much they earned and, a week later, get a request for a pay stub; after that, their employer would have to confirm by phone. Blend goes through payroll processors like ADP to condense those steps into one. Today, Blend works with about 30 mortgage originators, including Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp and Mason-McDuffie Mortgage. It also plans expansions into student and auto loans. While other fintech companies have become loan originators, Ghamsari wants to focus only on technology.

What it does: Provides health insurance. Sheehy, former CEO of United Healthcare, teamed up with two other health care heavy hitters to start Bright Health two years ago. The Minneapolis-based firm's advantage: its founders' backgrounds and its strategy of partnering with specific provider groups. Bright Health launched in Colorado early this year in partnership with Centura Health and covers 11,500 people. As it expands to new markets, including Arizona and Alabama, it expects subscribers to top 40,000 next year. The company has shifted its focus from individuals covered under the Affordable Care Act to the Medicare Advantage market. "We expect to be in 10 to 15 markets over the next several years," Sheehy says.

What it does: Makes systems that help companies store and recover backup data like inventory logs and personnel records. Founder and CEO Aron, 44, struck gold with his first unicorn, data-storage provider Nutanix, which he launched in 2009 and took public seven years later. Today, Nutanix has a market cap of $3.3 billion, making Aron's 9% stake worth $290 million. An Indian immigrant, he earned a Ph.D. in computer science at Rice, then worked as a lead developer on Google's File System storage product. In early 2013 he launched Cohesity, based in Santa Clara, California. The company's 300 customers pay an average of $225,000 for its product, which includes a combination of servers and software.

What it does: Provides automated freight-forwarding and tracking services. In the $9 trillion global logistics business, companies rely on middlemen called freight forwarders to track their goods. The freight forwarders use antiquated tools such as faxes and phone calls. In 2013, Petersen, now 37, founded Flexport in San Francisco. His goal: offer software that lets customers track and control their cargo a la FedEx. Flexport has 450 employees in nine offices, including Atlanta, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China, and warehouses in Los Angeles and Hong Kong, where customers can consolidate cargo.

What it does: Provides short-term financing to small businesses. Fundbox intends to reduce the cash-flow headaches of small companies, both those waiting for payment and those that need short-term credit to pay what they owe. Fundbox started as an invoice-financing company, lending money to small businesses against their accounts receivables at rates lower than those for cash advances and without prepayment penalties. Its new model, expected to launch in 2018, is meant to work like a credit card for business-to-business transactions. A company that owes money has Fundbox pay the invoice. The company that is owed gets its cash immediately (minus a small interchange fee). Meanwhile, the first company has 60 days to repay Fundbox before being charged interest. With U.S. businesses doing some $41 trillion in business-to-business transactions a year, the potential market is enormous, but setting up such a network is hard. Fundbox's success depends on the accuracy of its big-data-driven credit analysis. Shinar, an Israeli immigrant who has an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and previously worked at Battery Ventures, has been testing his approach for four years. Fundbox's loss rate, he says, is currently around 1% and declining every month.

What it does: Makes custom-designed living cells for companies in the fragrance, food, agriculture and pharmaceutical industries. Using DNA that it designs and manufactures, Boston-based Ginkgo programs cells to produce everything from the enzymes needed to make cheese and yogurt to the essential ingredient in peach flavoring. For French fragrance firm Robertet, Ginkgo makes microbes that generate rose oil. According to CEO Kelly, Ginkgo is poised for growth, with 44 cells in the works for 25 customers that will pay both R&D fees and royalties. In 2009, Kelly and three other MIT Ph.D.s teamed up with their MIT mentor, engineer turned synthetic biologist Tom Knight, and launched the company, which relied on government grants to develop its technology for the first five years. In 2014, the company went through Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator and kicked off its first commercial products. Ginkgo's 170 employees work with an army of 60 software-directed robots.

What it does: Makes software for robo-voice customer-service systems. Interactions' selling point: Its software, powered by artificial intelligence, includes a human element. When it fails to understand a thick accent or muffled word, a human steps in to trigger the correct response. Among its more than 50 customers: Hyatt hotels and health insurer Humana. In 2014, Interactions, which has been run since 2008 by CEO Michael Iacobucci, acquired a division of AT&T Labs, including its speech-recognition technology and 40 staffers, in a stock deal that gave AT&T a stake in the company.

What it does: Makes a cloud-based system that integrates voice, video and other communications applications. Based in Orem, Utah, Jive is one of a handful of major players, such as RingCentral and Fuze (on last year's Next Billion-Dollar Startups list), jockeying for position in the $40 billion-plus market to replace old corporate phone systems. CEO Pope, 39, and his cofounders set up the company in 2006 and, unlike other fast-growing tech firms, largely avoided venture funding. Today Jive employs about 600 people and counts companies like WellSpace Health, Expedia and Chop't among its customers.

What it does: Makes mattresses and sells them online and at West Elm stores. CEO Wolfe, a veteran of direct-to-consumer marketing, and Jamie Diamonstein, a third-generation mattress executive, founded Leesa in 2014. It's one of dozens of companies upending the $15 billion industry. "Everybody recognizes that traditional retail foot traffic is down dramatically," Wolfe says. "It is happening really quickly." Leesa, based in Virginia Beach, is a B Corp, with a clear social-impact strategy: It donates one mattress for every 10 it sells--it has given away about 20,000--and works with more than 50 homeless shelters.

What it does: Sells a service that helps diabetics manage their disease. Launched in 2014 in Mountain View, California, the company makes a glucose monitor that sends patients' blood glucose data to the cloud, where its technology returns results and treatment instructions to the monitor's screen. When a reading indicates a serious health threat, a Livongo diabetes specialist calls the patient within 90 seconds. Most of its 200-plus customers are self-insured employers, including AT&T, Boeing and Exxon Mobil. A veteran CEO and entrepreneur, Tullman, 58, has a son who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age eight. Tullman's mother also suffered from the disease.

What it does: Makes business-intelligence software that consolidates data from multiple applications. Looker's software promises to take all of a company's data and make it centrally accessible so it can be analyzed for trends and opportunities. The company has more than 1,000 corporate customers.

What it does: Uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to gather information from satellite images. From Chinese construction growth to environmental changes to old-fashioned parking-lot car counting, Orbital collates information for investors and governments. It has more than 75 major customers to date. The company is working on a new project to improve flood models for insurance companies.

What it does: Sells subscription software that helps salespeople manage their work flow. In 2011, Medina, an immigrant from Ecuador and former director of business development at Microsoft, and his cofounders launched Seattle-based GroupTalent, a service that matched companies with tech professionals looking for work. By 2014, the company had run aground, so CEO Medina and his team decided to scrap their original plan and sell the software they'd developed to manage their sales work flow. The product tracks research, appointments and calls, and sends automated follow-up emails to prospects. Relaunched in mid-2014 as Outreach, the company has 1,500 customers, including General Electric, CenturyLink and the San Francisco Chronicle. "This is my first and last startup," says Medina, 43. "I have one good idea."

What it does: Mails medications to patients packaged by the day and time they should be taken. Founded in 2013 (Parker was on the 2015 Forbes 30 Under 30 list), Pillpack has its main pharmacy in Manchester, New Hampshire, and offices in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, and Somerville, Massachusetts. It has more than 500 employees and serves more than 40,000 customers.

What it does: Makes software that helps technology startups and banks work together. Perret and Hockey, who appeared on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in 2015, started a company to help consumers better use financial data. They soon realized there was a need for software that could connect consumers, financial institutions and developers. "We found we could have so much more impact on the financial-services ecosystem by building the infrastructure," says Perret, now 30. Plaid's products provide authentication of accounts and routing numbers, income validation and real-time balance checks. Among its customers: Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase and Clarity Money.

What it does: Provides a delivery service for restaurants and other businesses. Since launching in San Francisco in 2011, Postmates has spread to 250 cities across the U.S. Customers order food and other goods through a website or app. Postmates charges businesses a 15% to 25% commission on each sale, plus a $4 or $6 delivery fee to customers. In addition to its 550 employees, the company relies on a courier workforce of more than 100,000 independent contractors. To beat rival delivery startups like Grubhub and DoorDash, it has launched new services like alcohol delivery in six states, including New York and California. Also in the works: a fleet of robots to replace human couriers in some markets. German-born CEO Lehmann, 39, expects the company to become profitable in 2018. He says the company may go public next year.

What it does: Runs a mobile-based events ticket marketplace. D'Souza and Groetzinger quit management-consulting jobs in 2008, and hit on the idea of aggregating tickets to sports, concerts, Broadway shows and more that were selling in over 100 secondary marketplaces like StubHub. Last year, SeatGeek moved into primary ticketing, hoping to disrupt an area dominated by Ticketmaster. Its new SeatGeek Open platform allows performers and teams to sell tickets directly through apps and websites that fans already use.

What it does: Makes systems that help companies collect and analyze customer data. When Reinhardt and his cofounders posted their idea on Y Combinator's Hacker News in December 2012, the community responded with a resounding yes. "I don't think anyone had really built a product around this concept," recalls Reinhardt, 28, a Forbes 30 Under 30 alum. Today Segment has 175 employees, mostly in San Francisco, and counts Gap, Crate & Barrel, Autodesk and Instacart among its customers. It's planning new products and an office in Europe.

What it does: Sells cloud-based subscription software for home-service businesses like contractors, plumbers and electricians. Among ServiceTitan's nearly 1,500 customers: plumbing franchise Mr. Rooter and George Brazil, a large provider of plumbing services and heating and air-conditioning systems. The founders' fathers are both Armenian immigrants who work in the industries their sons' company serves. A computer scientist with a degree from the University of Southern California, Kuzoyan, 34, teamed up with Stanford grad Mahdessian, 32, and launched ServiceTitan, based in Glendale, California, in 2012.

What it does: Builds and launches small satellites called CubeSats, about the size of a wine bottle. Spire has launched 51 CubeSats. It is focused on tracking the movements of ships and helps catch the occasional pirate. Spire also provides weather information to customers like the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.

What it does: Sells cloud-based customer-management software for industries like insurance and telecommunications. Vlocity traces its roots to the 1990s, when Schmaier and Ramsey worked at Oracle with Marc Benioff, who went on to found Salesforce. The idea for Vlocity: software that runs on top of Salesforce's products to manage relationships in industries with the worst reputations for customer service. Launched in 2014, Vlocity has 80 customers in 20 countries, including MetLife, T-Mobile and the City of New York. Salesforce's venture-capital arm was an early Vlocity investor, and Vlocity's headquarters are in Salesforce's San Francisco building.

What it does: Runs an online wedding registry. Zola holds no inventory, leaving that risk to its more than 500 vendors, including KitchenAid and Dyson. Two innovations it brings to the $19 billion industry: Couples can choose when to receive their shipment and can digitally exchange unwanted gifts in advance. Ma, who previously ran Gilt Taste, says she learned what to do and what not to do from that shuttered online retail site.

In February 2018, I took on a new job managing and writing Forbes' education coverage. I'd spent the previous two years on the Entrepreneurs team, following six years

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In February 2018, I took on a new job managing and writing Forbes' education coverage. I'd spent the previous two years on the Entrepreneurs team, following six years writing for the Leadership channel. My mission with education is to explore the intersection of education and business. I'm
recruiting contributors and also looking for my own stories. I’ve been at Forbes since 1995, writing about everything from books to billionaires. Among my favorite stories: South Africa’s first black billionaire, Patrice Motsepe, and British diamond jewelry mogul Laurence Graff, both of whom built their vast fortunes from nothing. At Forbes magazine I also did a stint editing the lifestyle section and I used to edit opinion pieces by the likes of John Bogle and Gordon Bethune. I got my job at Forbes through a brilliant libertarian economist, Susan Lee, whom I used to put on television at MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Before that I covered law and lawyers for journalistic stickler, harsh taskmaster and the best teacher a young reporter could have had, Steven Brill.